Matchmaker Matchmaker

Summary:

When Darcy has a marriage-shaped hoop to jump through to get her inheritance, Jane is the bestest bro who agrees to a faux marriage. Of course, Jane has her own little agenda that involves Darcy, Thor, herself, and a California-king-size bed.

Work Text:

Darcy stormed into the lab, shouting “JANE! JANEY! O sweet Jane, love of my life and the one true keeper of my cold dead heart!”

“What, Darcy? Little busy right now,” called Jane from beneath a huge scary-looking science machine. Jane was lying on her back underneath it and Darcy could hear her tinkering. She pulled on Jane’s legs,

“Jane, you have to help. Mucho problemo.”

Jane slid out from underneath the thing, plaid shirt rumpled and one eyebrow raised critically,

“If this is because you lost a bet with Clint again…”

“No, not quite, though I still maintain that was an emergency. Jane, I have to get married.” That certainly got the astrophysicist’s attention,

“Say what now?”

“Some great aunt or something on my dad’s side died. She hadn’t talked to any of us in ages, kind of a hag. Anyway, she had it in her will that all her money went to whoever they could get in touch with first.”

“Which was you?” Jane asked, knowing how her assistant was perpetually glued to her phone in one way or another (Clint didn’t take well to people welching on a bet). Darcy nodded,

“Yeah. She’s filthy rich—not like Tony Stark rich, but like normal-people rich—and I got all her money!”

“…I’m failing to see the emergency,” Jane said flatly. Darcy rolled her eyes,

“Turns out that not only is she a hag, but she’s a fucking matchmaker too. To get the money, I either have to be married or get married within thirty days,” Darcy said, still panting a bit from running all the way to the lab. Jane shook her head and furrowed her brows,

“What the hell? I thought that was only in trashy romance novels,” she said. Darcy fixed Jane with a judgmental eyebrow,

“Jane. Our whole life is pretty much the plot of a trashy romance novel. Astrophysicist falls in love with space alien prince who happens to be smoking hot and not have an alien-looking penis? Face it, your life is a trashy romance novel,” Darcy said. Jane paused a second, then said,

“Not saying I agree, but we have bigger problems. You have to get married. I don’t know how long the paperwork takes, so I vote we deal with this ASAP.”

“Precisely.”

“And after you get married, you can collect the money, get divorced, and life goes on. Like a Kardashian marriage,” Jane said, ticking off the to-do list on her fingers. Darcy shook her head,

“Not sure how you picked up enough pop culture to know that reference—“

“Thor wanted to know more about American culture and asked Tony to show him—“

“But there’s a catch. I have to be married for a year.”

“A YEAR? You don’t get the money until the end of it?”

“Bingo,” said Darcy. Jane stared at her for a second,

“Wow. You’re great aunt kind of was a hag.”

“Eh, she got what was coming to her. Anyway, about me getting a gold band on this hand…”

“Yeah,” Jane said distractedly as she thought for a bit, running scenarios, “what are you thinking?”

“I drafted a Craigslist ad.”

“Darcy. No. We are not finding your husband on Craigslist,” Jane said. Sometimes the fact Darcy had lived through college amazed her. The two sat down on the provided couch, for scientists that had to watch a project overnight (or when Darcy didn’t feel up to dragging Jane up to her apartment). Jane started listing names,

“Steve?”

“America’s golden boy agreeing to a farce marriage to get money? Somehow I don’t see that going over well with, like, anyone. And Bucky would actually True Facts murder me.”

“Bucky?”

“He has his own legal shitshow going on right now that I don’t want to get tangled up in.”

“Bruce?”

“On a retreat somewhere in not-America.”

“Clint?”

“Already married.”

“Tony?”

“I’m pretty sure he’d rather just hand me a check and laugh.”

“Natasha?”

“Already asked her. Nixed the idea on the grounds that that would up my likelihood of being kidnapped by five thousand. And Sam is out on the grounds of being in a committed relationship with Maria, Rhodey has put up with too much of Tony’s shit to ever agree to this, and Ian won’t answer my calls,” Darcy said, finishing off the list, “This is why I declared it an emergency.”

“Well, you were thorough in your research, I’ll give you that,” Jane said as she shook her head in disbelief. Then, the metaphorical lightbulb came on,

“Me,” Darcy look up as Jane spoke, “you could marry me.”

Darcy’s eyebrows slowly climbed to her hairline, “Jane, sweetie, dearheart, I’m pretty sure Thor would have an opinion or six about that. Besides, I thought you were working on getting married to him.”

“I’m pretty sure he’d be cool with it as long as we explained the reasoning. And trust me, a year of kinda-marriage is, like, a fling on Asgard. No worries.”

“Awesome. Oh, one rule: we do not tell Tony. Or any of the other Avengers. Or their compatriots. Well, we have to tell Natasha because she sorta already knows and she’d figure it out in like ten minutes anyway. But aside from her, we tell no one else in the Tower.”

“Deal,” said Jane, holding out her hand. Darcy shook it, then leaned in and hugged her new fiancée,

“Thanks, Jane. Best friend a girl could hope for.” Jane hugged her back. Honestly, this was way better than anything she could have planned. A few weeks ago, Jane and Thor had talked about maybe bringing Darcy into their relationship. They both loved her and when Jane had suggested it, Thor had emphatically agreed to the idea. Now, now that Darcy and Jane were going to be married for a full year, maybe, just maybe, if she played her cards right…Jane felt a thrill go through her. This might work.